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Monday, June 20, 2016

Little is Left to Tell by Steven Hendricks

Happy Monday, everybody! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Little is Left to Tell by Steven Hendricks.

Readers, I rarely rely on the official copy for the synopsis part of my posts, preferring to build my own instead. Sometimes, however, I'm left, as was the case with this book, feeling as though the whole thing just flew right over my head. So to start, I defer to the official copy:

Little Is Left to Tell is the haunting novel by master fabulist Steven Hendricks. Enter a nocturnal world where the unreal is seen on a liminal horizon of fading memory, illuminated by partial understanding and lyrical fictions. Virginia the Wolf writes her last novel to lure her daughter home. A rabbit named Hart Crane must eat words to speak, while passing zeppelins drop bombs. Mr. Fin tries to read the past in marginalia and to rebuild his son from boat parts. A novel that bridges between dreamscape and reality, Little Is Left to Tell is entrancing and enthralling.

So yes, many of the characters in Hendricks's debut are animals. And at least a few of those animals are named after famous literary figures. Their stories, too, take inspiration from their namesakes. And yet, I'm not familiar enough with those figures to catch all of the references. Instead, it was the author's acknowledgements that lit that lightbulb for me.

I'd thought this was a book that I would quite love but perhaps the above mentioned lack of literary clout in my past reading was in part to blame. Not that I think the author went about creating a book that wouldn't be accessible for those who hadn't read Woolf, Crane, and others. But I think it would certainly have made it more enjoyable for me. It would have made me "get" what I was reading.

The animals do lend a bit of a fable feel to Little is Left to Tell, an element I did quite enjoy. It does, as the Kirkus review acknowledges, lighten what is in reality a much darker story. It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I think for the right reader Little is Left To Tell will be a quite moving tale. As for me, it was a struggle but in the end I muddled through. Now it's on to the next thing.

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here. For more on Steven Hendricks and his work you can visit his website here.